Time since the asteroid hit Earth: ~4.95 billion years (subjective to Aryan)
Aryan drifted between galaxies still forming, listening to silence.
A silence too clean.
Too sterile.
Too obedient.
> "It's missing something," he said aloud.
> "If you say background music, I swear I'll make a cosmic boombox," Light God quipped, appearing with headphones and beatboxing terribly.
> "Not music as entertainment," Aryan said. "Music as essence."
He opened his palm. From it emerged **pure resonance** — not a sound, but a **frequency field** capable of vibrating across time and matter simultaneously.
He called it **The First Tone**.
It wasn't sung.
It wasn't played.
It simply *was*.
And wherever this tone touched, matter began organizing itself more smoothly — atoms syncing, tides flowing in rhythmic cycles, species **humming instinctively**.
> "Whoa," Light God said, actually speechless. "You just gave the universe… rhythm."
Aryan wrote a new law:
`THE UNIVERSE MAY SING.`
Planets began forming harmonic orbits.
Winds carried melodies in storms.
Species began using tonal pulses to identify each other before they had language.
Some even **danced** before they walked.
Then, it evolved.
One civilization — the **Maelari**, a gas-based intelligence inhabiting the cloud belts of a magnetic star — developed a **sonic syntax**.
They didn't speak.
They sang their entire lives.
Birth was a chord.
Death, a fading trill.
And their capital wasn't a city — it was a **symphony** suspended in storm-light.
Aryan watched in awe.
> "Their physics is tonal," he whispered. "They shape force with harmony."
But harmony, like all things, can be corrupted.
In a distant system, a dissonant wave emerged — not from any world, but from the **resonance layer itself**.
A **false tone**.
Perfectly structured… but hollow.
It began disrupting the Maelari — causing their communication to collapse. Their bodies, linked by frequency, began **desyncing**.
Civil war erupted.
Not over land. Not over power.
But over **who was out of tune**.
> "It's spreading like tinnitus through reality," Aryan said.
> "You accidentally invented musical malware," Light God said. "That's… kinda metal."
Aryan inserted a failsafe:
`NO FREQUENCY SHALL EXIST WITHOUT MEANING.`
The false tone cracked. Shattered.
But the Maelari were never the same.
They rebuilt — quieter. Simpler. Less ornate.
They feared music now.
They whispered songs only in private.
As if creation itself might betray them again.
> "Did I… ruin something?" Aryan asked.
> "No," Light God replied. "You reminded them that even beauty carries risk."
Aryan sat in stillness.
Among ruined symphonies and unfinished melodies, he wondered:
> "If music is memory, then what do we do with the notes that hurt?"
The stars offered no answer.
Only hums.
Soft.
Wounded.
— End of Chapter 18